Saturday, April 11, 1998

Items in Last Supper collection run the gamut from religious artifacts to snow domes

By Diane McCartney / Knight Ridder Newspapers

WICHITA, Kan. -- Some of them light up. Some hold pencils or pocket change. Some can tell you the temperature, and some can even help keep you cool.

They're made of paper, plastic, wood, metal and glass, decorated with glitter, lace and shells, fashioned into candles, TV lamps and shadow boxes adorned with tiny fake palm trees.

They're all reproductions of a famous religious scene: The Last Supper.

And they're all on display in David Franks' dining room.

Franks, a Wichita resident, has a collection of more than 200 Last Supper scenes.

The scene -- depicting Christ and his 12 apostles seated at a table on the evening before his crucifixion -- has been reproduced in almost every form imaginable.

Franks' collection includes pieces that have been carved, molded, sculpted, painted, gilded, embossed, tatted, embroidered, printed on batik and worked into tapestries.

They range from religious artifacts, such as altar pieces and unction cabinets, to mundane items such as fans, candles, puzzles, T-shirts, refrigerator magnets and snow domes.

"We have it here in everything from paper to cast iron -- and brass, copper and pewter," Franks said.

Franks and his wife, Katie Murdock, search for the items in flea markets, church gift shops and Christian stores while traveling. They also receive them as gifts from friends -- and from each other.

"It's quite a challenge now to try to surprise him -- to find them and buy them right under his nose," Murdock said.

The collection started "almost as a joke," said Franks, 41. Some friends were going to Europe in 1981, and he asked them to bring back a "kidney-shaped, mosaic coffee table of the Last Supper."

They didn't find that, he said, but they sent back postcards. The collection grew slowly until about 1990, when Franks began "seriously" looking for images.

He has a velvet painting that he found at a Coney Island flea market and a plaque that came from a Mission Santa Barbara, Calif., gift shop. Other items are from Jerusalem, Guatemala, Italy, China and Puerto Rico.

The images come from the works of Raphael, Dali and Ghirlandaio, but the painting by Leonardo da Vinci is the one people know best, Franks said.

The fresco was originally created, in 1497, as art for a dining room, Franks said, and today it hangs in the refectory at Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy.

"It was one of (Leonardo's) experiments," Franks said. "He invented a new kind of paint that never dried."

Leonardo divided the work symmetrically, arranging the apostles "in groups of three, which leaves Jesus all by himself," Franks said. "The point is that everybody is in such an uproar that they're ignoring him completely."

Franks has several examples of Leonardo's work.

Almost every inch of Franks' own dining room is covered with images of the Last Supper.

"So eating in here is kind of like being in a big restaurant," he said.

Franks is intrigued by how the Last Supper -- "a revered work of art, a masterpiece and a religious icon" -- can be transformed into a kind of pop art.

"Everybody knows it's a masterpiece, and I guess they want to have it in some form," he said.

Murdock regards the collection as interesting folk art.

"What's interesting to me is the different media and the different interpretations," she said.

Murdock, who teaches music composition at Wichita State University, collects "postcards, music kitsch and cat things." She met Franks at a music conference in Arkansas. They've been married three years.

Franks says he'd be hard-pressed to name a favorite Last Supper item. ("It would be like having a favorite child.")

"I guess our favorite one is the one we'll find next," he said. "That's why we keep looking."

Recently, the couple picked up three new items, in Blackwell, Okla.

"I'm still looking for the belt buckle and the baseball cap," Franks said. He doesn't know whether they exist, he said. "I'm just hoping."

(c) 1998, The Wichita Eagle (Wichita, Kan.).

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Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.